سلام
Salām
Peace; God’s peace, meaning His greeting and blessing, and the greeting that Muslims give one another.
What it means
Salām means peace, safety and freedom from harm. In the Quran it is a word of greeting from God to the people of Paradise: “‘Peace’ is a word from a Merciful Lord” (36:58). It shares its root with Islām and with al-Salām, a name of God. Muslims greet one another with as-salāmu ʿalaykum, “peace be upon you”, and the reply is wa ʿalaykum as-salām. Faruqi explains the word as the peace of God, that is, His greeting and blessing, so that a person who gives the greeting is invoking God’s peace on the one greeted. It also closes the ritual prayer, when the worshipper turns right and left and says it.
Often misunderstood as
Translating salam as “peace” alone drops the sense of a blessing given by God and wished for others, and it hides the link to the name al-Salam.
What the sources say
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) told his Companions to spread the greeting among themselves, and said that they would not believe until they loved one another (Sahih Muslim). The Quran asks believers to reply to a greeting with a better one or at least with the same (4:86).
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 35, listed as SALĀM. The definition is restated here.